I've just travelled BKK-AMM-CAI with RJ in J. I've travelled with them before, however not for a few years.

It was a generally pleasant flight between BKK and AMM. Few joined the flight in bangkok (continued from KL) and it was turned around quickly. Being a midnight departure, they fairly quickly got into the meal service (no predinner drinks) which was done without menus. I do recall fairly extravagant menu books in the past. The food was served from large dishes on the trolley and plated by the crew at your request. A novel concept and it seemed to work well with the food still looking ok when served. Drinks were hard to come by, but that may be a cultural clash. I was impressed with the speed of the service. Dinner and desert was complete an hour after takeoff with a full J cabin. Worlds above Qantas' 2-3 hour efforts ex Asia on a similar flight.

I didn't use the IFE however it was a fairly large on demand screen. Content seemed ok but limited compared to QF/EK etc.

The seat is a sloped bed which was ok but not wonderful. It wasn't entirely flat as the leg rest jotted down a little. It's a leather surface so I found myself slipping a bit.

I Passed on breakfast to maximise sleep a little.

The crew seemed distant and a little cold, but I got the impression during my brief time in Jordan that it's just how the people are. When called upon they responded quickly. Interesting, the flight deck door was regularly open. Early in the flight, two Thai ladies were walked from economy through business and into the cockpit. They stayed for about 5 minutes and wandered out giggling happily. Didn't really worry me, but was certainly different from what we're used to of late.

Transfer in AMM was great. Lovely new airport, very clean and quite small so getting around was easy. Crown Lounge was located above the main departure hall and was open and airy. I wasn't really feeling the best after the overnight flight but the whole experience was peaceful.

Boarded an E175 for the short trip to CAI. J seats were quite nice (leather and softer than QF 73s) and we were the only two pax in the cabin. No crew members were present on boarding (common theme, same ex BKK) so we showed ourselves to row 3.

Starts to get interesting here... A younger female FA approaches with a tray of 9 drinks (odd for an empty cabin) and offers them to us. We both just ask for water and she hands one to me and then goes to open the little drinks stand to place my partners drink on. While leaning forward to do this, the entire tray of now 7 drinks slides forward and lands in my partners lap, leaving them, their iphone and passport absolutely soaked. The crew member is apologetic and picks the glasses up and scurries away. The male purser walks over with the tray of warm towels and announces "these are dry" and walks off. We tidy up the mess as best as possible and luckily there is a change of pants in our cabin bag (no luck for the soaked shirt and underwear. My poor other half spends the 60 minute trip to CAI covered in sticky juice which was fairly unpleasant.

Mistakes happen.. And the flight attendant came by again to apologize. I said it was fine, however we'd need to sort out payment for the cleaning of clothes. Probably serves as a lesson not to travel in the outfit you need for more important activities! She said ok and wanders off. The male purser comes back and announces "she said you want something?" I repeated myself and he said "well it was your fault!". I found that interesting and relayed the events to which he said "ok then, I'll organise something". I asked what and he said he'd speak with ops. I wasn't overly impressed with his attitude. Unfortunately, seems he was just a poor cabin manager. I also observed him in his jump seat on his mobile during the takeoff roll and approach into CAI.

Service inflight was fine. Breakfast was a bread plate and coffee was on request. The FA handed us forms in Arabic which, after some thought, we established were immigration forms. She managed to find some English ones eventually however did ask if we were Egyptian (a funny thought for those who know my very sickly white partner!).

There was no mention of the incident again during the flight. As we were waiting for the door to open, I asked the purser what he'd organised. I got a blank stare and he said "nothing". I reminded him that he committed to dealing with it but he shrugged and said "send an email". I reminded him again that he said he'd speak to ops but he just said "it's not my job". At this point I was pretty disappointed so I remarked that "people make mistakes, but you need to deal with them. It's unprofessional not to just as it's unprofessional to play on your cell during takeoff and landing". All I got was a smile and "thank you very much".

Arrival was painless. The ground staff blocked other pax from our bus so we were in quickly. Visas are now $25 and we got through immigration in about 5 mins. Bags took another 15 or so.

I'd have liked to enjoy RJ more, but the experience was soured a little by the lackluster attitude of the staff in general. It's a shame as AMM is a great airport and the onboard product isn't too bad.

Very poorly.managed airline. When things go smoothly theyre fine but i think no accountability for any staff means they will offer you nothing or make no attempts to accommodate if anythig goes wrong. Your experience described here mirrors mine - sorted return flights dubai to amman,but almost denied boarding back to dubai for some booking system reason which was not explained to me. When your holding passports and tickets and onward tickets and the check in manager says heres nothing he can do and instructs you to buy flights on emirates if you want to make your onward cknnection theres something seriously wrong. I still have no idea how we got on that flight but would never consider them again.

Flew on them a few times, FRA to CDG via AMM. It was a dONEx booking and thought I'd go the long way to Paris to get some extra SCs. Won't be in a rush to do that again due to the time spent in the air, however service was fine (but then again I wasn't expecting much).

We also flew them on BKK-KUL and my partner and I were both op-upped to J from discount Y.

I'll give a rundown of the whole experience when I get home in a few weeks... But I've done 4 RJ sectors in J over a week or so and they were all disappointing. On the final sector (the 4 hour AMM-FCO) it was blindingly obvious that the crew certainly didn't appreciate having a white male in their business cabin and made that point very clear with an enormous service difference between myself and the local clientele.

Clearly an airline stuck in a dying past... Won't be on my list for future use.

Forgot to update this... The four sectors I completed with RJ are as below;

1) BKK-AMM, as discussed above. In general, nothing special but not the worst of them either. It was all overnight so I managed some sleep which is probably the main thing.

2) AMM-CAI, as discussed above.... won't go there again, however for interests sake, RJ have never responded to the email that was sent to them following the issues on this flight.

3) CAI-AMM. Probably the best of them once we got out of CAI airport. The original flight was cancelled and the airline moved us onto an earlier flight (7:30am-ish). CAI is a corrupt dump of an airport so the ground arrangements were painful. People grabbing bags from the car and becoming your "escort" etc. I did finally have a bit of a snap at someone and, fortunately, they left us alone! Checkin took a while, the "business" line wasn't policed and the ground staff weren't wearing uniforms so it was very hard to see who was actually meant to be helping or not (except for the 1 RJ staff member who sat in the corner and chatted). The agent initially said "all your sectors are shown as FLOWN" and it took half an hour of work before they issued boarding passes. Maybe I should have paid a "tip"... I'm not sure. Eventually it was sorted though. RJ staff member did not approach at any point. On board, the crew were a bit better. There was no friendliness however they got the job done quickly.

4) AMM-FCO. One positive - the dedicated premium checkin at AMM is good. I can see it getting busy (there were only four desks that you could sit at to check in) however it was fairly quick at the time. The baggage setup is odd. When walking in, somebody eventually approaches you, weighs your bag, gives you a "weight" sticker and then after checkin you go back to them (where your bags are hopefully still sitting) and give them the bag tags that the checkin agent hands you. Could use some refinement, however the concept is good.
Onboard, the short haul seat is good. Similar to the QF J on the Intl 767s however with a decent entertainment system. Unfortunately, on this flight, the crew were fairly ordinary and I got the impression they weren't happy having a younger white male onboard. The level of service provided to the middle eastern customers was worlds above that offered to me. Every little thing had to be asked for and was provided with grunts and unhappiness. The crew weren't happy to be serving drinks and made this very clear. One staff member made a fairly strong homophobic comment towards the end of the flight which was extremely insulting (and presumptuous!). Later in the flight he approached me and oddly asked "what's the time in Italy? I don't know". I'm not sure if this was meant to be a peace offering or what, but I got off the plane feeling very glad to not be getting onto another RJ flight again!

My travel companion has now followed up on the RJ complaint with Qantas which is probably a waste of time... however they did sell the ticket and the future of Qantas does seem to be "Middle East" focused, so I do feel it is important that they keep on top of their less than impressive "partners".

I won't go near the airline again, however that's not to say I won't return to Jordan which was a fascinating country that seems to be very progressive for that part of the world. I'll probably go on BA next time!

I just completed 2 flights with Royal Jordanian and was quite impressed given the negative reports that I had read.

The flights were part of a 280k QFF redemption, and as much as I searched in the lead up, I couldn't find another carrier to switch to.

The itinerary was IST - DXB which involved an a/c change in Amman. The 1st flight left IST at 04:05 OMG o'clock. We actually pushed back a few minutes early. The 2 crew in the J cabin of the Embraer 175 were both male and there was only 4 pax at the pointy end. The seats were recliner type and very comfortable and the plane, although not appearing new, looked clean and presentable.

Breakfast was served as below, and was standard quality.

The male cabin crew were attentive and the flight was non eventful in a good way.

Similarly, the 2nd flight AMM - DXB was just as good (A321). The crew were again attentive, with one member exceptionally so. As this was an 8am flight, we were offered the same choices for breakfast but a wine list was also given, although alcohol was not proactively offered. Given the lack of sleep, I wasn't feeling the urge to test the waters on this occasion.

IFE was available on the 2nd flight which was of longer duration, so I managed to watch an entire movie.

Based on these 2 flights, I would fly Royal Jordanian again.

The other notable thing on this sector was Amman airport (Queen Alia). It appears to be very large and still undergoing construction. From what I saw however, you could count the number of transiting aircraft on 2 hands. I think we had to go through 3 security checks proceeding to International transfer and not a smile to be had from airport staff. The lounge was considerable on the mezzanine level and overlooked the expansive duty free area with more staff than shoppers apparent. The lounge was very comfortable with several seating configurations, but no charging points.

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Mysore was the former capital of Karnataka state before the British sort of took it.. its meant to be quite a nice city (at least by Indian standards) with a lot of historic sites.
You could also consider getting back to Bengaluru (approx 3hrs by train or road) where your options open up considerably.
Its been some time since I've traveled…

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